Why divestment campaign is on the money

Author and thought leader Bill McKibben of 350.org toured the nation recently trying to persuade young and old alike that we’re in a climate-change emergency and must immediately reduce carbon use or face threats to humanity and ecosystems not seen in millennia. Like Al Gore and others, McKibben faces the primary obstacle of apathy in America regarding humanity’s impact on climate change. After all, our lifestyles have not yet been negatively impacted by rising carbon in the atmosphere. Even in the face of Hurricane Sandy and more severe firestorms, the rapid loss of species, massive deforestation, and the melting glaciers and poles, most people still don’t take climate change seriously enough to believe that these emergent realities ought to change human behavior. Rather, governments and big business hold firm in the name of job preservation and creation, as if the global...